Anyone with Happy Memories from being a JW born in, please post here....

my parents were VERY lax so i had it easy and am very thankful for that. always went to "worldly" freinds' houses and played video games (including halo when it came out ), wasnt pressured to get baptized/comment at meetings/reach out (plus my dad was never an ms or elder despite 20+ years in da troof), never had family studies. never forced out in service, only got 1/2 hours a month. plus when i turned 18 there were no rules haha but i was still expected to "please jehovah". i realize i am very privileged in this, because i know lots of elders kids that were always being forced to do stuff they hated and were out in service every single saturday of their life, while i got to play games and watch tv most saturday mornings. plus the parties werent all bad.

however my biggest regrets/sad memories are slacking off in high school (because i had no intention of college and was gonna pioneer) and pioneering, which i wasted 4 years of my life doing. and not being able to join "competitive sports" when all my friends in school were on the same soccer team and kept asking me to join; all i could say was "my religion wont let me".

For me a tremendous amount of good has come out of the bad. I am really delighted with that.

- Learning ABOUT the Bible, albeit robotically and passively, so that when I awoke spiritually I could suddenly understand much of its central message.

- Kept artificially safe by the boundaries of legalism, so that I could really appreciate and enjoy freedom in Christ, upon awakening.

- Learning ABOUT Jesus made it easier to KNOW him when I was led to him (by the map in scripture known as the unabridged gospel).

- Experienced darkness, deception and black light as a powerful backdrop against which to compare and deeply appreciate genuine light and truth.

- Having fully tried, tested and experienced legalism, moralism, ethnocentrism and Gnosticism with no remaining doubts as to their status as failed ideologies at the core of all religion (albeit to generally lesser degrees in religions other than the Watchtower).

- The opportunity to fully de/reconstruct, understand and articulate very valuable firsthand experience of the spiritually insane Pharisees' deep, hidden contempt for the unabridged gospel even as outlined in their own publications.

As a child I always felt immense joy and happiness when I uttered the word 'AMEN' to the closing prayer at the meetings and the assemblies. There were many occasions I did this, sometimes prematurely a little too eager. So in a way I suppose I had a happy chidhood.

The only fun memory i have is skating on sunday after the meeting,we jws would at the time take over a skating rink in downtown Baltimore.That's it that's all i got ooh wait at the DC the dramas were somewhat fun it was the prelude to food being brought out at the intermission.

I think SkyGreen you've been blessed to have been born in a nice family regardless of them being JW.

I have lots of relatives non-JW who have long happy marriages and had lots of kids 4-5 on average all of whom have grown and had good lives, married good people and are happy without ever studying with JWs. I grew up in a rural area and was blessed that in my school there weren't really problems of drugs whilst some of my wordly friends did use drugs later in life (they also stopped) the vast majority of my friends especially girls have grown onto being normal girls who married some way before I did have kids and seem to have fairly happy lives so I don't think that JW have a particularly higher rate of happy families, it's more down to the nature of the people themselves.

My happiest times when I was little were when I used to go stay during the summer holidays with my grandmother who is catholic. She was (still is) an old school woman, that taught me manners, respect, keep a straight posture and all those good stuff the old generation would teach a child. She would take me to the beach every day, sat on the front of her bike, she'd make me treats for afternoon snack and we would spend endless hours playing cards. Then when I was older she'd take me on saturday nights to the ballroom with her, she dances a mean tango too :D Love my grand ma

My children have a lot of good memories from their JW childhoods, amidst all the guilt, control and fear. Not being raised a JW, I understood that I needed to try to make up for all the normal things that JW kids lose.

One thing I will say is that I wouldn't have the friends I grew up with now,if we didn't meet at the Kingdom Hall. They left before I did,and so we lost touch since they were disfellowshipped,so a catch 22 there.

Plus,I wouldn't know some new friends I made here.

When I was growing up,there still were picnics,skating parties,etc. So,we had some fun.

happy memories, thoughts? i was 3rd gen too.....i did like getting to go to new york city those summers...staying at a nice hotel, playing the princess. in the mega-convention in 1958 we stayed at The Plaza and i pretended i was eloise the whole time... one year we got to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria - that was awesome, and my mother was a fashionista in her day and we'd always do Fifth Ave and buy stuff at Lord & Taylor....Henri Bendel....dePinna, B Altman, Best & Co........and as a kid growing up, i thought freddie franz was an absolute hoot. his raspy voice screeching prophecy fulfillments - those talks were classics!!! i always wished i could be one of those kids down below that got candy from his pocket on his way back to the bunker.

on the flip side - HATED the crowds and the subway. i still have nightmares relating to staircases going down into those hellish pits.